‘in fact I am the one much the more to blame . . . quite inexcusable’: AL to AIB, 17 September 1816, while enclosing a letter from Byron, Dep. Lovelace Byron 79, fols. 139–40.
Annabella remarked that Byron’s satire was ‘so good as to make me smile at myself’: Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), p. 283.
The journal, as its publisher proudly pointed out, carried ‘an article on a great Poet’: John Murray to AIB, Friday, 7 February 1817, Dep. Lovelace Byron 94, fols. 70–1.
as even Annabella had to admit – Scott had ‘not expressed, but I think directly implied’: AIB to Theresa Villiers (about the Quarterly Review article), 6 March 1816, Dep. Lovelace Byron 114.
‘but to injure, and then to desert, and then to turn back and wound her widow’d privacy’: Blackwood’s Magazine, August 1819. Byron never discovered whether the author was either Scott’s son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, or John Wilson, a regular writer for Blackwood’s. Wilson wrote the piece.
‘I was thought a devil, because Lady Byron was allowed to be an angel’: Marguerite Blessington, Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (H. Colburn, 1834), pp. 160–1.
Chapter Ten: In Search of a Father
‘The little boy [Hugo, an orphaned nephew of Mary Montgomery] is a very nice child’: AAB to AINB, 7 December 1824, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 15–16.
He asked for his daughter to be taught music (in which neither parent had any skill) and Italian: Sending an Italian book to her friend Harriet Siddons’s daughter, Elizabeth, Annabella wrote: ‘The language is beautiful, so do not get the translation. I wish your Mother could enjoy the original.’ AINB to Elizabeth Siddons, 13 June 18[34], HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘Is the Girl imaginative? . . . Is she social or solitary’: Byron to AL, 12 October 1823. AINB to AL, 1 December 1823, both in Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), pp. 196–7.
‘Her prevailing characteristic is cheerfulness and good-temper’: AINB to AL, 1 December 1823, ibid., pp. 196–7.
Byron’s ‘pertickeler wish’ had been that his valet should carry a message to his wife and child: William Fletcher to John Murray, 21 April 1824, 43531 NLS.
she begged him – vainly – to recall what her husband’s final message to her had been: Mayne, op. cit., p. 297.
‘the fiercest Animals have the rarest number in their litters’: Byron, 6 November 1821, BL&J, vol. 9.
‘I had a strange prepossession that she would never be fond of me’: AIB to Theresa Villiers, 11 November 1818, Dep. Lovelace Byron 114, fols. 190–1.
‘She looked round the Bed and on the Bed, and then into the Closet’: JN to AIB, 5 September 1817, Dep. Lovelace Byron 37, fols. 37–8.
her ‘dearest wish to prove a better child than she [Lady Noel] has yet found me’: AIB to Harriet Siddons, 20 September 1817, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘Hastings will be good for me’: AIB to Harriet Siddons, 27 March 1820, ibid.
Contemplating the dreary years ahead of enacting ‘a calm performance of duty’: AIB to Harriet Siddons, 11 May 1821, ibid.
‘No person can be more rational, companiable [sic] and endearing than this rare child’: Lamont Journal, 20–22 June and 7 July 1821, Dep. Lovelace Byron 118, item 5.
A letter addressed to Cousin George’s mother, now also known as Lady Byron, proudly announced her near perfect command of Spanish and Italian: AAB to 7th Lady Byron, 7 December 1824, Dep. Lovelace Byron 168. Ada, although she scarcely knew her Aunt Augusta, was a resolute user of her own full name. Others addressed her as ‘Ada’. Ada always signed herself as Augusta Ada, or ‘A. A.’
She could understand her mother’s enduring affection for gentle Sophy Tamworth: AAB to AINB, 9 September 1824, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 13–14.
‘tho from the accidental delay of a letter, my consent may have been inferred by the party in question’: AINB to John Murray, 31 March 1826, NLS.
After glumly admitting that it had been ‘quite shocking’ of her to announce she did not believe in prayers: AAB to AINB, 1 and 3 June 1826, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 27–8, 30–1.
her mother could now manage to scrawl in her own hand the simple words ‘much better’: AAB to AINB, 3 February 1828, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 54–5.
Ada admitted that there had been times when ‘I really thought . . . you could not live’: AAB to AINB, 8 April 1828, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 67–9.
‘I have got a scheme about a . . . steamengine’: AAB to AINB, 4 April 1828, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 63–6.
‘very gentle . . . just a little pottering thing . . .’: AAB to AINB, 12 October 1828, in a letter playfully addressed ‘To the Right Honourable Immortal Grand Crockery Panjandrum Lady Noel Byron from the little Panjandrum of Clay – Oh Alas!’, Dep. Lovelace Byron 41, fols. 70–3.
Flying had been abandoned for the creation of ‘my Planetarium’: AAB to Sophia Frend (later De Morgan), 4 February 1829, Dep. Lovelace Byron 171, fols. 16–17.
Chapter Eleven: A Rainbow’s Arc (1829–35)
Augusta, whose only concern was to please the beguiling Henry, announced in April 1829 that she felt personally ‘very hurt’: AL to AINB, 20 April 1829, Dep. Lovelace Byron 84, fols. 68–70.
Perhaps, the answer is best summed up by Annabella: AINB to Theresa Villiers, 11 May 1852, Dep. Lovelace Byron 114.
By 1 December, Annabella was feeling angry enough to identify Lushington to young Lizzie Siddons: ANB to Elizabeth Siddons (later Mair), 1 December 1829, HRC, bound vol. 1 of the Byron Collection.
‘From your representations and the conclusions you draw’: AINB to AL, 17 January 1830, 43411, NLS.
To Henry, she despatched a plaintive squawk of command: The letters between Medora, Trevanion and Augusta, dating from February 1831, were published in Ethel Mayne, The Life and Letters of Anne Isabella, Lady Noel Byron (Charles Scribner, 1929), pp. 343–4. At the Bodleian, the main holding of Medora’s letters is in Dep.
